- Ryanair is getting slammed for failing to remove a white man who hurled racist insults at an elderly black woman on board one of its flights.
- Video capturing the October 19th incident has gone viral with members of the public chastising the lack of reaction on the part of the airline.
- “We are aware of this video and have reported this matter to Essex Police,” Ryanair said in a statement.
Irish ultra-low-cost airline Ryanair is under fire after its crew failed to remove a white man who hurled racist insults at an elderly black woman while boarding one of its flights from Barcelona, Spain to London.
The incident, which took place on October 19, was captured on video by a fellow passenger David Lawrence and has now gone viral with more than five million views on Facebook and another 600,000 on YouTube.
It’s unclear what, if anything, triggered the tirade. However, the video shows the man seated in a window seat of the Boeing 737 hurling a series of vile racist and sexist insults toward the woman in the aisle seat.
According to the caption posted with the video, Lawrence claims the incident was a result of the man not wanting to sit next to the woman.
The woman was eventually moved to another seat by a Ryanair crew member while the man was allowed to remain in his seat.
Ryanair has remained quiet during the whole incident, only releasing a short one-sentence statement, "We are aware of this video and have reported this matter to Essex Police."
The reaction to the tirade on social media was swift and overwhelmingly critical of Ryanair, even spawning the hashtags RyanairRacism and BoycottRyanair.
https://twitter.com/CraigLangran/status/1054362141686415361?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Nice try of moving the responsibility away from yourself. You failed. You let racism happening in one of your planes and instead of taking a stand against it you took the worst opinion in moving the woman away and let the racist sit. Shame on you. #RyanairRacism
— Søren Molkentin🌳 (@SoerenMlktn) October 22, 2018
ABSOLUTELY DREADFUL!! #ryanairracism and why was this Lady told to change seats? #SinkUBastards https://t.co/71O5LI8RYe
— @arsenalsdove (@arsenalsdove) October 21, 2018
Ryanair priority boarding queue in Luton earlier today... pic.twitter.com/hrZaHP5P2y
— 📻 ED SMITH 📻 (@EdSmithington) October 22, 2018
@Ryanair, by tolerating the racist ugliness from one passenger to another, you seem to condone it. Make this a learning moment and figure out how you’re going to handle it next time. #StandUpToRacism
— Heidi Heinbaugh (@HeidiHeinbaugh) October 22, 2018
Other have also pledged to boycott the airline.
This is disgusting, Ryanair should have intervened immediately instead of just letting her be repeatedly subjected to racist abuse! The Racist should have been kicked off the aircraft & reported to police! I will NEVER fly with #Ryanair again! #BoycottRyanair #RyanairRacism
— @mssgtty (@mssgtty) October 22, 2018
https://twitter.com/Curious_Chak/status/1054375793453871104?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfwhttps://twitter.com/thehowler2012/status/1053734563975979010?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw